There are some great musicians and legal minds here on this forum. If you're familiar with this case, what are your thoughts? (If you're not familiar, google it, as I don't want to link to outside news)

It seems to be a standard chord progression. Granted not at standard as I-IV-V (Louie, Louie; Blitzkrieg Bop, etc.), but standard enough to have been used in many songs.

Apparently Jimmy Page (not sure if he was with Led Zep at the time?) toured along with Spirit. There is quite a close match in both progression and tone. I think there's more there than in some other music lawsuits I've seen/heard.

I have a buddy that is/was a Russian concert pianist. Now he's a lawyer here in the states although still Russian and still a concert pianist. He sent me an email breaking the two songs down. I didn't understand most of it but my takeaway was that the cord progression goes back to the Renaissance and has been used in about a million songs and if we had more of an appreciation for the harpsichord would be as recognizable and commonplace as 12 bar blues.

I don't like to make plans. You start making plans and the next thing you know some prosecutor is whining about "premeditation" and "malice aforethought" to a jury.

and I'm glad I'm not on the jury, because what I've read just confuses the crap out of me.

There's the headline that Led Zeppelin stole Stairway from a Spirit song, and then there's the how ever long the trial's been running very technical and (mostly) focused arguments in the case. Apparently, for instance, it's actually the sheet music that's copyrighted, and I believe it was Page on the stand the other day who apparently doesn't actually read music. It's probably going to boil down to whether the jury finds there was a unique contribution by Spirit to what's apparently a fairly old progression, and that unique contribution was used by Led Zeppelin without credit and payment. I'm assuming that since it's a civil case, it will be a "more likely than not" burden of proof.

I have a buddy that is/was a Russian concert pianist. Now he's a lawyer here in the states although still Russian and still a concert pianist. He sent me an email breaking the two songs down. I didn't understand most of it but my takeaway was that the cord progression goes back to the Renaissance and has been used in about a million songs and if we had more of an appreciation for the harpsichord would be as recognizable and commonplace as 12 bar blues.

Chopin's Prelude in E minor (opus 28, #4) is the earliest specific work I can cite that could lay claim to this progression - I'm surprised they haven't used this as a defense. Of course, Jobim could also hit them up over "How Insensitive" and Rodgers & Hart over "My Funny Valentine". This is a commonly used progression, and I think the lawsuit is frivolous to the point of deserving a countersuit for cost recovery.

The bass line in Stairway is what confuses lay people - the progression is 1-5-1 dim7-4-6b-4m-2-5. But the bass line descends chromatically from the tonic for the first 4 chords, so it doesn't "feel" like that progression as used in other tunes. The chord forms are what are referred to as inversions, i.e. the notes in the chord are not played "in order" from the tonic tone (the "named" note) upward. Of course, this is how it's played in Funny Valentine and Insensitive too.

There is no pleasure worth forgoing for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

After the original artist is dead and some giant media company acquires the rights and goes after an artist.

I'm heartened that Warner lost their case for demanding royalties for the performance of "Happy Birthday" recently - more insanity.

Most Aussies were pretty appalled when local blasts from the past "Men At Work" lost to a big corporation who bought the rights to an even older Aussie classic tune "Kookaburra" when the flautist riffed it once in a performance and the few bars of melody weren't on the original release but dubbed as plagiarists anyway.

Seems like media companies are so scared of the shifting space of media delivery and consumption that they go absolutely nuts over any opportunity.

It just seems ludicrous to me.

My reading on the Stairway case I understaood that LZ acknowledged the time spent touring with Spirit and like the tune and asked if they could use it and were acknowledged that they could.

The big mistake they made back then, obviously, was not getting both bands legal teams on the case immediately to draft up a contract with a million codicils.